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I'm racking my brain with this one - precalculus was years ago, so combination sets with multiple groups seem a little hard to manage.

Let's establish this - if ranking all the players 1-11, there are exactly 39,916,800 ways to arrange them. However, we're not arranging them 1-11 - we're splitting them into two five-person groups with one left over.

There are exactly six ways to arrange the teams so they are men vs. women - all five women on one team, and five of the six men on the other, and the only variable is which man sits out.

So we have our numerator - six. To get the denominator, it's a little harder. So I Googled "combination calculator" with this thought in mind - we can simplify this equation by doing the following: We pick ONE of the teams, understanding that, with every combination we pick for that team, say, the yellow team, we can fill the blue team with six possible combinations.

This allows us to simplify a bit - since we established that there are six possibilities for a men vs. women contest, and we have also established that, with each yellow team drawn, we have six possible blue teams, these sixes cancel each other out.

Therefore, the equation is simple: How many five-player combinations can we get out of an 11-player group?

According to www.calculatorsoup.com, the answer to that question is 462. Therefore, the probability of a men vs. women contest is 1/462, or approximately a 0.216% chance.

That's not to say that Burnett arranged this or that Jiffy did - the arrangement that happened is a coincidence, but it's just as likely as the other 2,771 combinations of teams that could have occurred.

Also, a men vs. women split was interesting for about four seconds. The challenge relied a lot on physical strength, and at least in this cast, the men were physically more powerful than the women. Right away, one could tell the men would win.

To explain how I got to 1/252:The first pick didn't matter but say blue got a man.Then Yellow has 5/10 chances of getting a woman.Blue next is 5/9 chances of getting a man.Yellow = 4/8 for a womanBlue = 4/7 for a manYellow = 3/6 for a womanBlue = 3/5 manYellow = 2/4 womanBlue = 2/3 manYellow = 1/2 woman

Multiply them you get 1/252. (If you start yellow gets a woman, you get 1/210 but still 0.5%, 0.4% or 0.2% is tough odds to beat. Not impossible but highly unlikely.)

I don't know if there was manipulation but it does look suspicious. They knew Marty was giving them golden interviews, they knew he was in deadly danger, they knew there was the beginning of a man/woman riff so they could have made it happen. All Jeff needed was a bag with a double pouch, one containing only yellow rocks, the other blue ones. Then Jeff switches hands between each pick. Chase sitting out, the man closest to Marty's enemy, makes me doubt even more the randomness of the result.

I have the probability of all male/all female teams as double what you posted, that is 1/231. At the risk of turning this into a math thresd...

You are correct in saying that there are 462 ways to choose a 5 member yellow team from 11 players. However, there are two situations in which the teams can break along gender lines:

a) the yellow team is all men AND a man sits out. Now there are six yellow teams that are all men (i.e. one where each man is not on the yellow team). Hence, the probability that the yellow team is all men is 6/462. However, no matter which five men are on the yellow team, the remaining man must be chosen to sit out when the blue team is chosen. The probability of this is 1/6. Hence the probability of (a) is (6/462)x(1/6)=1/462. I feel that this is the idea that you had in your argument Zoidberg.

b) The yellow team is all women. Since there are five women, there is exactly one way in which this condition is satisfied, making the probability of (b) 1/462.

Since (a) and (b) cannot be simultaneously satisfied by the choice of any one 5 player yellow team, the resulting probability of a men vs. women contest is 1/462 + 1/462 = 2/462 or 1/231.

* Same team split, just different colors.** Same team split, just different colors.*** Same team split, just different colors.‡ Same team split, just different colors.‡‡ Same team split, just different colors.

There are two possible ways to get an even 5/5 split (in bold) out of a possible 11 different combinations of men vs women. Sure, it gets more complicated if you go into what order they pick or which individual is on which team, but if you're looking purely at the possible combinations of gender splitting, there's an 18.2% chance of getting all men on one team versus all women on the other. Not exactly outrageous odds.

It's all because they are independant draws: There is only 1 arrangement to get the 5 women on one tribe but there are many ways to get a 4-1 split:

Brenda+Kelly+Holly+Jane w/ Nay on the other sideBrenda+Kelly+Holly+Nay w/ Jane on the other sideBrenda+Kelly+Jane+Nay w/ Holly on the other sideBrenda+Holly+Jane+Nay w/ Kelly on the other sdeHolly+Jane+Nay+Kelly w/ Brenda on the other side

All those have to count in your 4w splits. The numbers increase when you add the men because B/K/H/J could have either Chase or Benry or Marty or etc... Now with the 3/2 splits, we easily get to the 252 arrangements.

Forgetting the sit-out, I think what you are doing is like throwing 10 Pennies in the air 100 times and seeing how many times you would get 5 heads and 5 tails but that is not what we have here: We have 5 Nickels and 5 Pennies. When the first Nickel lands on Head then all the other Nickels have to turn out Head while all the Pennies have to turn out tails. That's not the same. But I am not a statistician. Maybe Cahaya could help!

Random draw my a$$. Reality TV is no place for reality. A men versus women challenge is always more interesting, though they could have hardly picked a worse time to do it since the stick and brick walls virtually guaranteed the men would win. The women weren't getting through those brick walls unless they each grabbed a limb and used NaOnka's head like a battering ram.

The problem with going by odds is that the players drew rocks from a bag one by one and they felt it was an honest draw, even the losers. Jeff didn't want the teams so uneven. The design nor the practice run didn't account for such an unlikely result, so the challenge designers weren't happy.

The truth is that if they want to play men against women on a challenge that they can do it by simply saying that's how it's being played. They would pick a less physical challenge though.

The odds that Burnett was on location at that point are long I think. I think he's delegated to Probst to run the on site day in day out.

While it may be true that MB only cares about his wallet, I'm sure his wallet understands it needs good watchable TV to stay so happily fat. They edited it hard to try and make the best of it but did anyone really think the women had much of a chance when all Dan had to do was run behind the others and let them do the muscle work. Boring competition really.

The problem with looking at the odds is it proves nothing. If something is a one in a million chance then it will inevitably happen, could be the first time or the millionth time or anywhere inbetween.

Dabo, I didn't say it proved anything, just that I have my doubts. Like I wrote, what happened to Stacy, Chris, Steph, Aitu4 and Russell justify those doubts.

OFG: The players are under contract not to reveal anything and they may not even be aware of what happened. Like I wrote, all you needed was a bag with 2 pouches and some hand switching from Jeff and no one would see the difference.

Those contracts wouldn't be valid in regard to unfair manipulations of the game. The FCC wouldn't look at it in terms of manipulating for someone's prospects to ultimately win the game, just in respect to their chances of winning or losing in that challenge.

And Stacy managed to get an out of court settlement for just that. No doubt Burnett's attorneys made it tougher after that.

What will always make it tough are the questions of proof, the question of jurisdiction, (the events happening outside the USA) and there's also the question of being asked back. Why do you think that Ozzy, Penner, Parvati and Candice were asked back in Micronesia? Good characters for sure but so were many others. However, those are the four that were hurt by the help Yul received. Again, no proof but doubts.

Eliza admitted that there were things that happened before the Leann vote that she wasn't allowed to talk about. We were asking her why she didn't talk to Ami and Leann after Chris told her about Scout and Twila's plan. She skated around by saying she was afraid Ami would confront Scout, that it could turn against her and then she added that she wasn't allowed to talk about what happened after talking to Chris and before the TC. Most of us guessed that, as soon as they heard that a flip was underway, the producers ordered everyone to be quiet and rushed them to TC (the same happened in Samoa for Erik's key boot). That would have been manipulation that would have helped Chris tremendously. Eliza was a law student (she passed her bar last year btw) but she prefered not to talk about it and got invited back as a Favorite...and Ami too, would you look at that!!!!!

And what about Amanda's comment last season that something happened that soured her about the game? I seriously doubt that she meant she was upset that her friend Parvati backstabbed her. Many speculated that Amanda became aware of the help Parvati and Russell received.

I agree about reality TV not being so real, but otherwise, what you have there is a whole lot of circumstantial fluff leading to conjecture. I see no evidence concrete enough to convince me of anything. Laura talking on the radio about Russell being helped wasn't even convincing, and everyone knows how much I respect Laura.

The Aitu4 might have been helped by a couple well-timed twists, but I doubt Yul was being specifically helped. The jury could very well have still voted for Ozzy, which they almost did. The Aitu4 were a great underdog story; so I can see production helping them a little.

>>> And what about Amanda's comment last season that something happened that soured her about the game? I seriously doubt that she meant she was upset that her friend Parvati backstabbed her. Many speculated that Amanda became aware of the help Parvati and Russell received.

Absolutely I agree that's what happened with Amanda, but it wasn't production that helped Parvati. It was her BFF casting associate, that's well known by now. Parvati was on Samoa during 19 and was aware of Russell's game play. She was pointed towards that alliance.

Other than that major unfair element, I've not heard of anything else. That was enough. The casting buddy got fired. Amanda wasn't the only upset player.

There is speculation that Russell was told that he should give his idol to Parvati. Also, that Tyson was encouraged to vote the way he did. I'm not convinced but it has been rumored.

I do buy that Russell was helped during Samoa though: The idols were placed where production knew he would snoop. Galu was rushed into voting out Erik. The decision not to vote anyone out when Swan was medevaced was done to help Foa Foa as was the early merge.

Iltarion, Ozzy was robbed of his best opportunity to win when the F2 turned out to be a F3. That gave the game to Yul.

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